You’ll be shocked to hear that Carnegie Hall is stuffed with Mozart this week. (The composer turned 250 years old on January 27.) Three of the concerts belong to the Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff, and the chamber orchestra he founded.The first of the concerts took place on Tuesday night; the second will occur tonight; and the third is Saturday night.

In Salzburg every January, they have a “Mozart Week.” Well, every week is Mozart Week, this year, all over.

At Carnegie, the Schiff deal is this: He begins and ends each concert with a Mozart piano concerto (which he conducts from the bench). In between is another Mozart work. On Tuesday it was the Horn Concerto in E flat, K. 495. Tonight it will be a symphony: No. 33 in B flat, K.319. And on Saturday, it will be the Sinfonia concertante in E flat, K. 364, that marvelous work for violin and viola (and orchestra).

New York has heard a ton of Mozart piano concertos in the last two months, and almost all of them have been conducted from the bench. Recently, I reviewed a bunch of Mozart-concerto recordings – same thing. Played and conducted (or sort of conducted) by the same man.

Have we reached the point where availing oneself of a real, live conductor is uncool? Is a pianist’s pride now at stake? Is he a wuss if he merely plays?

Let me continue in this vein: The late Robert Casadesus recorded his Mozart concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. Was he a chump for doing so? George Szell! What did he know about Mozart?

Conducting from the bench – at least in Mozart – is now routine. And this is not necessarily to be welcomed. There are many problems with “playconducting” (to use a phrase I recently learned): The soloist is apt to slight both his piano playing and the conducting. Worse, he “conducts” with his playing – he leads the orchestra with emphases in his playing – which distorts that playing.

And if we “play-conduct” Mozart, how about Beethoven? Do we then move on to Brahms? At that point, I think I would quit (going to the concert hall).

Mr. Schiff brought to town the Cappella Andrea Barca. You may not have heard of it.This is an orchestra that Mr. Schiff handpicked in the late 1990s, mainly for the purpose of performing the Mozart piano concertos. Building your own band – now there’s a luxury.

Tuesday’s concert began with the Concerto No. 14 in E flat, K. 449. This is a splendid work – being a Mozart piano concerto, how could it not be? – with a lovely middle movement (Andantino) and an extra-felicitous rondo. Mr. Schiff is an experienced and famous Mozartean. But he did not do his best playing in this concerto.

One of his problems was choppiness: He was choppy in his passagework, and ragged elsewhere. Mr. Schiff’s Mozart tends to be crunchy, rather than smooth – and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the pianist could have used much more grace, much more limpidity, on this occasion.

In that middle movement,he did very little singing, and now and then he outright banged. Mr. Schiff may be crunchy,but he is not a banger, as a rule. Also, he did the inevitable “conducting” with his playing: This entailed odd accents, odd crescendos,and the like.To add insult to the audience’s injury, this didn’t even “work”: The orchestra and the piano were still out of coordination.

In short, if Mr. Schiff had had a conductor, his playing would have been better. (Probably.) The conducting would have been better too.

I wish to mention, also, that Mr. Schiff kept his hands in suspense between movements, allowing the audience no cough time. But it doesn’t matter what you allow, or disallow: The audience will cough anyway.

Nice try, though, Andras.

The soloist in the horn concerto was Radovan Vlatkovic’ , born in Zagreb, since enjoying a busy international career. Mr. Schiff – now devoting full time to conducting – and the Cappella Andrea Barca started wretchedly: not together at all. But when Mr. Vlatkovic took over, all was well. This is a hornist utterly in command of himself, and his instrument.

His sound was gleaming, and Mr. Vlatkovic could modulate that sound, to boot: This is not a stiff, stout, or bluff player. Technically, he could do whatever he wanted, and his tricks included neat trills. Mr. Vlatkovic ‘ reminded you that the horn can be played dexterously and elegantly. Attending concerts regularly, you may forget this.

Mr. Vlatkovic faltered a bit, here and there, but any slip was trivial. Mainly, you could relax and enjoy the music. This is rare, when the horn is in action: The sheer difficulty of playing the instrument makes you nervous.

At the beginning of Mozart’s middle movement – a romance – Mr. Vlatkovic was badly flat, but he quickly righted himself.And the finale, you may recall, is one of the merriest and catchiest of all Mozart movements – in concertos, symphonies, chamber works, whatever. It practically defines bubbly. Mr.Vlatkovic strained a little in his forte playing – that was unlike him, judging from the evidence of this performance as a whole – but he was still gratifying.

After intermission, Mr. Schiff turned to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 in B flat, K. 450. Other concertos his week are all in the teens: No. 17, No. 18, No. 19. Oops, I forgot that one is No. 12. It just misses. But what a delicious, lovable, happily A-major work!

Mr. Schiff and Cappella Andrea Barca will perform again tonight and February 25 at Isaac Stern Auditorium (Carnegie Hall, 881 Seventh Avenue at 57th Street, 212-247-7800).